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Distinguished Peacemakers Lectures Series |
Bill and Sally Hambrecht Distinguished Peacemakers Lectures at AUB
Jan Elliasson − Peace-making Under the United Nations Flag: Reflections on a Quarter Century of Mediation
5pm, Tuesday 17, February 2009
Auditorium A, West Hall, AUB
Jan Elliasson's Bio:
In a distinguished career spanning over a quarter century, Ambassador Jan Eliasson of Sweden served most recently as Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General for Darfur. From 2005-2006, Eliasson headed the United Nations General Assembly, and before that was the first UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, where he was involved in Somalia, Sudan, Mozambique and the Balkans. He also served as Minister for Foreign Affairs in Sweden. From 1980-1986, he was part of the UN mediation missions in the war between Iran and Iraq, headed by the late Prime Minister Olof Palme. In 1993-1994, he served as mediator in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). He has lectured in Swedish universities and around the world on mediation, conflict resolution and UN reform.
Gareth Evans- Preventing and Resolving Deadly Conflict: What Have We Leaned? Monday, November 10, 4pm, Auditorium A, West Hall, AUB.
Gareth Evan's Bio:
Gareth Evans has been since January 2000 President of the Brussels based International Crisis Group, the independent global NGO working with some 140 full-time staff on five continents to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. He came to Crisis Group after 21 years in Australian politics, thirteen of them as a Cabinet Minister. As Foreign Minister (1988-96) he was best known internationally for his role in developing the UN peace plan for Cambodia, helping conclude the Chemical Weapons Convention, and helping initiate new Asia Pacific regional economic and security architecture. He has written or edited nine books-most recently The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All, for publication September 2008- and has published over 90 journal articles and chapters on foreign relations, human rights and legal and constitutional reform.
Full Text of the lecture
Robert Malley- Can Washington Mediate Arab- Israeli Peace? Lessons from Camp David II, the Clinton Years and Beyond. Thursday, October 9, 5pm, Auditorium A, West Hall.
Robert Malley's Bio:
From 2000 to 2001, Mr. Malley was Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. In this capacity, he served as a principal advisor to the President and the National Security Advisor at the White House on the Middle East peace process. Mr. Malley joined the National Security Council staff in August 1994 as Director for Democracy. He helped coordinate U.S. refugee policy and efforts to promote democracy and human rights abroad.
Robert Malley has been Director of the International Crisis Group's Middle East and North Africa Program since January 2002. Prior to that, he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He also played a leading role in U.S. policy toward Cuba. Mr. Malley is a graduate of Yale University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University, England, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of "The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam" and, with Hussein Agha, of "Camp David:The Tragedy of Errors ," "The Last Negotiation", "Three Men in a Boat" and "Hamas -The Perils of Power".
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News:
Read the OSLO 2008 Meeting Report. Some of the participants from OSLO will be speaking at IFI as Distinguished Peacemakers.
BEIRUT: A city that has suffered its share of conflict in recent history, Beirut in the next two years will offer the region and the world important lessons in political mediation and conflict-resolution. Ten of the world's most experienced and respected political mediators will visit the American University of Beirut (AUB), where they will give public lectures, meet with students and faculty, and hold workshops with fellow conflict-resolution practitioners from Lebanon and the rest of the Arab World.
The "Bill and Sally Hambrecht Distinguished Peacemakers Lectures at AUB" launched in October 2007 with an inaugural lecture by Alvaro de Soto, a distinguished Peruvian diplomat with 25 years of experience as a United Nations senior official, envoy, and mediator. He was a special UN representative and mediator involved with the Arab-Israeli peace process, and conflicts in the Western Sahara, El Salvador, and Cyprus, among others.
At the conclusion of the series, the lectures will be collected in a special volume to be published in 2009 by the Issam Fares Institute at AUB, and made available internationally to students and practitioners of conflict resolution and mediation. All lectures will be available on the web in audio and video format as well.
The lecture series is funded by a generous grant from Bill and Sally Hambrecht, who stated on the occasion of the series inauguration: "We are delighted to participate in this impressive series of lectures by some of the world's most experienced political mediators, so that their collective knowledge can be useful to others working to resolve conflicts and spread the fruits of justice, stability, peace and economic progress."
They noted that the Issam Fares Institute and the American University of Beirut are ideal hosts for this series, because it "will help to deepen and broaden the AUB's long-standing mission to bring together people from all parts of the world who can learn from each other in a spirit of truth-seeking and fraternity."
Issam Fares Institute Director Rami G. Khouri said that dates for the visits of some of the world's most renowned mediators are being fixed and the schedule of speakers will be announced soon. The series will bring a speaker to AUB on average once every two months, to spend two days on campus and in Lebanon. He added the series aims to tap into the many lessons inherent in the mediators' rich experience - both successes and failures - and to enrich the conflict-resolution and peace-making community in Lebanon and the Arab world.
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